I’m a binge writer.…I'm not an everyday writer.

Moments of pure inspiration are glorious, but most of a writer’s life is, to adapt the old cliché, about perspiration rather than inspiration. Sometimes you have to write even when the muse isn’t cooperating.

It’s a long journey, you know. I really believe in the work of the unconscious. You have an idea, you think about it. You dream about it. But, for me, it’s my way of working, it depends on writing of course. I don’t need to go every day in front of my computer and write something. It’s always a surprise. In the moment, it’s a necessity. You need to write, so you write a thing.

Do I have a muse? Well, I don’t know if this is an adequate answer, but I suppose my muse is the people of South Africa. I’ve often said that the little — or maybe the lot — I know about loving and hating was taught me by South Africa. Now that’s a big debt. When you owe that much to a situation that has shaped your conscience, your heart, your whole life, you’re profoundly indebted.

I think to a certain respect, yes. But also, you try to follow the best guidelines you have, the constitutional by-laws. You have to interpret them from time to time, but in the final analysis, in some instances, it would be a gut reaction. But a gut based on preparation and study. Not just a fly-by-night gut reaction.

My dad certainly, and coaches I had that I was very close to. They took a big part in my developing an interest in sports, actually. One has passed away I was very close to. His name was Bill Slybaum. He was my coach in junior high school for tennis and then he moved up the ladder academically and went to the high school about the time I got there. He was my high school coach in basketball. I became very close to him. Later on, when I came back after the service, I went to Compton Junior College near Los Angeles, and he was the junior college basketball coach. I was very close to him.

I personally feel that drugs constitute the biggest major problem we have in this country, forgetting sports, because drugs create the medical problems that cause the increase in all our medical costs. They contribute to the homeless, that’s a big problem many people see today, and a lot of that stems from drugs. So I feel very, very uptight about it, and I wanted to do as much as I could.

I think it’s probably a natural, adversarial position between a commissioner in any sport and their players association, or union. I was very concerned about this problem. I wanted to be sure that we were clean, so I set up a testing program. Their union took it to arbitration, and got it softened a great deal. So now I will be criticized in the future for drug incidents, yet I was unable to execute a testing program that could stop it.

I have never really studied them very much. I think that I was proud of — not just what I did — but my staff played obviously a major part, did in popularizing the sport, with the early promotional activities of NFL Properties, merchandising, NFL Films, all the work that we put on the Super Bowl to make that a top attraction. All those things, I feel very good about, but I think they played a big part in popularizing the league.

That was a direct challenge to the NFL constitution, which said you have to have a three-quarters approving vote if you’re going to move your franchise. And we had Davis challenge that in his move from Oakland to Los Angeles. And it was sitting there in the constitution, and I couldn’t just say, “Oh, I’m not going to press this.” I brought it to the attention of the owners, and I said, “I think we have to defend this constitution.” So we had two trials over a couple of years.